By: Robin Wauters Co-founder and editor-in-chief of Tech.eu, with previous stints at The Next Web and TechCrunch under his belt. Deeply in love with his family, technology, traveling and Belgian beer.

In what is shaping up to become what the organisers call ‘the biggest entrepreneurship event ever to take place in Europe’, there will be mini-events taking place during the first week of February 2016 in more than 220 European cities.

From 1 to 5 February, volunteers have joined forces to organise local Startup Europe Week meetups and mini-conferences, from Amsterdam to Zurich.

Initiated by the European Commission / Startup Europe and with Tech.eu as its exclusive media partner, the week will give SEW partners from all over Europe to present their projects.

The idea is to make the event not your typical conference with motivational speeches or networking sessions; instead, the organisers are trying to exploit Europe’s diversity and look at the influence that the local traits have in shaping European startups.

As the organisers put it: “European regions are key players, from helping entrepreneurs to incorporate a company, to providing grants or taxes breaks. That is why we think it is critical to include the regions in this conversation”.

The initiative will help promote the tools that are available for entrepreneurs at a regional and European level, as the event will take place simultaneously in more than 40 countries and 220+ cities. Although the events have yet to be fully defined, each will have different agendas and line-ups of speakers.

Concretely, Startup Europe Week supports and strengthens regional governments prospective efforts to support entrepreneurship by making people aware that sometimes all facilities they need to get started (and create a business) are right next to them, in their city or region now. This is an excellent approach, because it creates momentum and avoids competition among cities and regions, which is key if we want to be a true single digital market!

Thanks to the joint efforts of a team of highly motivated volunteers and the support of the EC, week by week we saw the map of Europe being populated by over 200 events to spread the word about innovation, entrepreneurship and to present the local opportunities offered by public administrations to their startups ecosystems.

This bottom-up movement coordinated by SEW is only a part of the European startups picture, but is a fundamental wave we believe is highly impacting the innovation process in Europe. Now it’s time to surf this wave!